Air cushion vehicles (hereinafter called "hovercraft") are in use which have a skirt wherein a so-called loop (also known as a bag) of flexible material extends around the periphery of the rigid structure of the craft and attached to this loop there are a number of separate fingers which depend from the loop. These fingers are frequently attached to the loop by attachment webs. The attachment webs currently used have portions to be secured against a marginal region of a finger depending from the loop, or adjoining marginal regions of adjacent fingers, (which region(s) extend inwardly from the periphery of the hovercraft) and a further portion turned to one side of that planar portion and secured to the underside of the loop, giving a generally L-shaped cross section. Hovercraft have been in service for several years with such attachment webs although the webs have a number of disadvantages. The webs wear at an unacceptably rapid rate and may only last for a few days. When failure begins it tends to propagate rapidly along the full length of the attachment web. The fingers held by the web become detached while the hovercraft is at sea and hanging downwardly constituting a sea anchor. This can, and often does lead to the irretrievable loss of one or more fingers. Several fingers may be lost as the fingers which are hanging downwardly strike against others, and the damage spreads. The fingers are expensive and the task of replacing a substantial number of attachment webs at frequent intervals adds substantially to the cost of maintenance of the hovercraft. Furthermore the edges of the attachment webs are apt to wear through the hovercraft loop.
The attachment webs currently used consist of a single straight strip of flexible material doubled over along its length with a number of notches along one margin of the strip to form portions which can be turned outwardly from the plane of the strip. The unnotched portions are attached to the loop while the notched portions are attached to a vertical part of a finger (or adjoining vertical parts of adjacent fingers). Each notched portion of the strip has to be deformed from a straight to an arcuate condition so that it will follow the contour of the loop. Attachment webs must be handed at each side of the hovercraft so that the portions attached to the loop all lie to the same side, with respect to the direction of travel of the hovercraft, of the portions attached to the fingers.